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Nanotech Based Display
yodha writes "Ntera showed their NanoChromics Display (NCD) recently. The display uses a nanotechnology process to create a more paper-like image than traditional LCD screen. It delivers significant power savings (they've shoehorned one into an iPod to give people a sense of what it looks like). The image can even remain on the screen for weeks without any power and doesn't need a backlight."
So much for turning the screen off when you're looking at... home movies and your parents/friend/girlfriend walks in ;)
So many e-paper technologies...so much vaporware.
the question is how much paprer would that ipod cost me?
Wonder if it will work better with cell phone battery extender stickers attached to the back of the screen. (I kid)
so, i can have p0rn on my screen 24 hours a day?
could be a great marketing method:
-
tired of wasting electricity on porn?
have trouble fiddling around with all those dirty magazines?
then switch to NCD today!!!
-
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
I'm guessing they've got a very long way to go before it'll be in a 24" widescreen display. The impressive thing is the contrast level... something like this could make e-books a practical option.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
But the question remains, can I wipe my ass with it?
For office purposes it won't matter very much. But what about fast action gaming?
From ExtremeTech: "Still, Ntera claims that first production glass will be shipping at the end of the year, and intimated that a medical device manufacturer would be first out of the gate"
Considering the eBook prototype had an "issue", those won't be too far behind...but delayed, nonetheless.
I like the increased contrast. But can anyone elaborate on "nanotachnology processes"? That's like saying any common appliance uses "electromagnetic processes".
From Endgadget: The first batch will be shipping by the end of the year, but it'll likely be a while longer before they start showing up in consumer products.
Whatdayamean? We're not restricted to CAR bombs you know. Also, your artificial separation of drinks and bombs is misleading - many Irish drinks can serve both purposes, either as explosives or as chemical warfare agents, depending on whether you're talking about Guinness or not...
From this post at engadget: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000680031783/
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
So at what point does the thing malfunction and eat your house?
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
...would be having this on Tablet PCs.
I didn't see any mention of this, but considering that they say 'it has the consistency of paper' and the extremely high resolution, if it were touch sensitive, it would replace paper/pencil in a way that PDAs couldn't. I couldn't doodle that well on a palm, but with nanotech resolution and a thin enough stylus, notes on a tablet PC would become a reality.
Just my thoughts on this.
TFA claims that initially, it will draw more power than an LCD to paint the display, but the image will remain without additional repaints, saving energy.
Now, I'd like to think I'm not an idiot...but how will that save energy on displays which, for instance, require frequent repaints? Let's say that I'm running my iPod with one of those screens, as they show in the article. The thing has to draw segments of the bar frequently, update the time remaining once per second, draw the entire "Now playing:" row to create the "scroll" effect for long titles, redraw the top if you have a clock running up there, et cetera, et cetera.
Another example would be a touch-sensitive screen. In a drawing tablet, I'd imagine the repaint levels are not going to be particularly low, especially for full-tablet images...
I suppose my question becomes...is it actually less power-hungry than traditional LCDs for its practical uses?
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Yes yes, but what does "nanostructured" mean?
The iPod looks pretty awesome. The digital clock, however, is pretty uneven. Easy to read but part of the 8 is very faded.
Can't wait until this sort of technology becomes more widespread. Less power consumption for small devices is always good.
once they are in color...and can better 60 fps...but the technology looks awesome right now... I'm glad that there are finally some more solid advancements in this digital paper idea.
It's funny everyone always talked about creating digital paper, so people could read the news like they do on a regular newspaper, but by the time it comes around no one will read the paper anymore...I bet that I have a weeks worth of newspapers on my door step right now...getting the news that way is too damn slow...
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
a few questions come to mind, obviously the technology is fairly new, but is the physical screen stronger than that of a typical LCD? relative to current LCDs how much would it cost? Will it be sluggish at cold temps like LCDs? I'd love to have one of these on my tablet PC currently pretending to be my car radio, with the cold weather the screen reacts quite slow sometimes.
The Answer
This isn't the only one. There are a bunch of those kinds of display technologies in the pipeline: basically, LCD displays, but with small scall structures that increase contrast, viewing angle, and persistence.
It's a good short term solution because switching manufacturing over to those kinds of technologies should be fairly easy.
The disadvantage is that those are still heavy glass sandwidches, with all the problems that brings with it. eInk, OLED, and other new display technologies give far more flexible and lightweight displays, and promise significant weight savings.
offtopic.
I know most American gov. beer is shunned around here, but what about Guinness? Should I be considered a n00b for liking it (somewhat)? Are there higher levels of beer elitism?
"My monitor has been assimilated by nanites"
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
The image can even remain on the screen for weeks without any power and doesn't need a backlight."
I figured out how to do that 30 years ago to my folks TV with my PONG console...
There are lots of things these days that operate at or involve nano-meter technology, but what specifically about this produce uses Nanotech?
For me, Nanotech is enginering with Atoms; purposely building tiny machine on the Nanometer scale that do things like filter specific atoms to produce "pure" materials, act as a computer or build a rocket engine in a vat of liquid.
http://www.hawknest.com/
This kind of technology seems promising for the future of ebooks...
Let us all hope they do not screw up with this technology like Sony/Philips did with E Ink and their Librie ebook reader.
Guiness is great, I was just being sarcastic. It's kind of like the beer equivilent of Starbucks - half beverage, half ashtray. Oh, there I go again... Go on, mod me offtopic :)
So when can I pick up my "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"?
:)
This is going to be wonderful and I can't wait until I can finally fulfill an old dream of mine: to sit in sunlight and use my laptop.
And luckily I'm a Mac user, so I'll get it as soon as it's ready! *happily pokes the Trolls*
vicious, untreated political sewage...niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive...worshipless pap
"Doesn't need a backlight because it's reflective"? - doesn't that mean it needs some light to reflect? I thought it must be emissive to be truly backlight free like oleds.
I agree though, it looks like they are having difficulties with the larger screen, as the Ipod screen held the image fine, but the author stated he had to keep refreshing the ebook.
Mmmm, less power= less light shining in my eyes. Sounds like I might not need to increase the strength of my contacts after all!
Puhlease. This isn't nanotechnology. Until you have created a nanoassemblier, a self-replicating nanobot, or a gray goo apocalypse you aren't actually using "nanotechnology". You're making something made of very small pieces. Congrats, but it isn't nanotech.
Start by reading "Engines of Creation" and get back to me when you're not a marketing droid trying to hop on the nanotech bandwagon.
We've been hearing about electronic paper for years now hopefully this is actually the one that works. The technology does seem quite promising, and that they seem to be near shipping even more so but I have some concerns about the durability.
In particular my understanding of how the material works is by depositing an electrochromatic material (i.e. a material which undergoes a chemical reaction changing its coloring or transparancy when an electric current is applied) on a very bumpy surface. This is apparently how they solved the problems of weak coloration they mention on their product page.
One way you might think of this (but don't trust me I just rely on my basic physics and math background) is that previously these electrochemicals used a clear plastic sheet with color changing molecules deposited on it. This meant light only passed through one layer of the color changing molecules. The company instead figured out how to crumple up the plastic sheet on top of itself so the light would have to pass through multiple layers of the color changing molecules attached to the sheet.
This seems great and all and it may work perfectly and ship easily. However, even taking on faith that it is easy to make I am somewhat concerned that this 'crumpled sheet' could lose its shape.
Probably I am just being silly and someone with more chemical expertise will tell me why this can't happen.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
If that's the case, give me a break. There's more important things to do with our time. Pardon me for jumping the gun... but if this is the best that Nanotechnology has to offer us, I'm dissapointed. Half of us here at Slashdot don't even know how to read, for God's sake! What good is this going to do? ;)
-Vendal Thornheart
I always prefered vi.
Imagine an Etch-a-Sketch for the new millennium! Finally! (And with a touch-screen, it could be a Lite Brite, too!)
So it's not for video. Oh well.
Paper-like contrast and no power consumption for a static image!
"Its a meat process."
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
i love the fact their http://www.ntera.com/products/default.asp products page is written in all caps.
nothing screams WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING!!!!! like all caps.....
Maybe i missed it but i didn't read that 'it has the consistency of paper'. Notice the layers marked "glass" in the illustration. They did mention that it gave "the visual effect of ink on paper ".
Take away the glass and i assume your stylus will create the same effect as writing on wet tissue, sure.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
NCD technology uses electrodes made of nanostructured films of semiconducting metal oxides with a self assembled monolayer of electrochromic viologen molecules to overcome these issues.
Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense!
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
But when I was driving to work this morning, the license plateholder of the car in front of me said, "My other ride is yer mother." Which would normally be ammusing enough, but as I pulled up along side to pass I couldn't help notice that the driver was a smoking hot girl. I was left feeling a somewhat aroused, very confused, and now a little ashamed.
Samurai Porn? Yes. Yes there is.
"The image can even remain on the screen for weeks without any power and doesn't need a backlight."
Warning: Do not browse porn before a power outage.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
This screams ePaper to me.. like those things they told us 8 years ago that we'd have by now to read the daily newspaper...
I really do love the excellent contrast.. I think I have a lot of trouble reading things on computer screens for extended periods because of it, but that display looks absolutely delcious to my eyes.
First off, something I always thought would be cool is to have a digital picture frame. But the ones that I see a lot today just plain suck. Too thick and monitor-ish. If these looked like paper, it would be ez to make a digital pic frame out of it, and it would look good. Shoot, the things are cheap and sturdy, you could send grandma one in the mail, and not have to worry about losing the image.
A cool device that I would like to see, if this is thin enough, is an ebook device that actually looks like a book with pages, but each of the pages is a sheet of this stuff that contains a different piece of literature, and you could have like a USB hookup where the binding of hte book would normally be for syncing with a computer.
I don't know how thin this stuff is, but it would rock to have a lightweight monitor that you could hang on your wall. I know, LCD's already do that, but this stuff seems way cooler.
A device that you could draw on, and it would look good! And have good battery life! Like a digital drawing board or artists pad.
Cheaper, longer lasting battery life PDA's!
Ditto for cell phones!
And probably a whole bunch of other things!
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Yeah, that iPod certainly looks like Goatse
E-Ink Website
It seems to me these guys are already doing this. Perhaps this is competition?
What a strange review -- first they give us a nice photo comparing the new screen in an iPod to the standard LCD... but the standard iPod example is turned off. There's nothing on the screen we can compare with.
Okay, maybe they're really keen on the new tech and are trying to skew things its way.
But no, further down they discuss the eBook reader example. "This ebook looked great, and really shows off the power of the digital paper. Alas, I had to keep pressing the contrast button to refresh the image. Perhaps the technology is not as far along as the company suggested."
Huh? Anything you can achieve by pressing a button is easily achievable through software, isn't it? This is just a minor flaw in the implementation of this particular prototype... and says nothing useful about the actual screen.
Anyway, I'm sure more thoughtful reviews will be coming along soon -- this looks like pretty solid and exciting tech to me. It may not be suitable for many screens (i.e., it takes *more* power than a standard LCD if the pixels are all changing frequently... so you wouldn't watch a movie on it), but it'd be perfect for putting little status monitor screens on all kinds of things, plus for the applications they prototyped.
It's kind of like the beer equivilent of Starbucks - half beverage, half ashtray. Brilliant!
"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces." --Aldo Leopold (Paraphrased)
Does this mean we will have a cool new way to do one of those pictures for your wall that you change with your computer? I have been interested in them but they seem to be a waste of power.
Have you metaroderated recently?
The issue described sounded like a pretty simple prototype bug instead of a technology issue. Specifically, they said that they had to depress the contrast button constantly to keep the display on. So, whatever that was doing could be replaced with a simple switch and it would be good to go.
What's up with you people! It's so childish. Two more mature ways: 1) Either you think that porn is not good and then you at least try to avoid it. 2) Or you think that porn is totally ok and then you have balls to admit it publically and not be silly about it.
You lost me on the ashamed part.
I dream in binary.
I wonder if they've achieved significant power savings with that iPod. If it not only looks cool, but increases the battery life it'd be a pretty popular mod. They could sell a kit...
Also how much power would it really save in MP3 players? The iPod Shuffle has no screen at all and it doesn't last much longer than some other MP3 players with regular screens. I guess it'll look nice though.
Was it the word "Nanotechnology" that suckered you? Smartink ideas and developements have been around since the 1990's or before, these gents didn't even bother to try encapselating it in a flexable plastic strata so I'd be really impressed. What next? New audio communications device allows people to make telephone calls without wires! Navy builds ship that can sink and then rise again! Please Slashdot editors, It's "Stuff that MATTERS", not "Whatever stuff we happened to stumble accross"
There is another company working on a similar technology(maybe the same company?) that has been working with a small linux machine called the gumstix(which I'm currently using on a robotics project).
w .eink.com/
http://www.gumstix.com/inaction.html
http://ww
It's pretty neat stuff.
I like cars, but seeing the concept cars at an auto show is just annoying and frustrating. Same with new tech. Tell me when I can BUY it. I don't care what is going to hit 5 years from now. Most of this stuff vanishes into the vapor anyway.
Now we know why this is vapourware and will never make it to colour screens - did you ever see the Guinness ads with the tagline "Not everything in black and white makes sense"
y cl e.html
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC30820/bic
Ordinary newsprint paper can reflect less than 85% of the light falling on it. Really white colour printer paper can reflect over 97% of the light. Some papers help this along a bit by adding 'optical brightners' - stuff that absorbs UV and flouresces in the blue to counter the natural yellowness of the paper. This suggests if you use a really white background, you can occupy over 10% of the surface with non-active black components, and the white will still look acceptable. This display uses TiO2, the white in white paint (not usually the white in paper), but it looks more like newsprint.
(2) Blackness
A typical print black may be a density of about 1.8. Against a good white, 2% reflectance can look pretty black. It is hard to know what they are getting here because this is a multilayered device , and we are seeing reflections from the other layers. Judging by eye, we do not have quite this constrast. A cholesteric LCD has similar storage properties, but loks contrasty (though the ones I have seen always look blue-black).
(3) Flatness
I guess the pixels are 0.1mm or larger. The device looks rectangular in cross-section from the diagram (NB: this diagram has no dimensions, and the test suggests it was churned out by marketing droids, rather than the engineers who developed it - caveat lector). This suggests the device may appear deep, and may cast shadows. This is not necessarily a problem: light can diffuse 0.1mm within paper to give things like the Yule-Neilsen effect, but we do not notice a dark halo around print. However, if the thing casts a sharp shadow like some LCDs, then this can look disturbing, particularly when you get moire with halftoning patterns. This depth problem will get a lot worse with a colour display.
(4) Resolution
A display is not likely to equal the typical 1800 pixels per inch (70 pixels per mm) for decent looking text. However, this is an unreasonable demand for a refreshable display.
Print on paper is a tough act to follow. This display looks okay, but no more than that. I would look for a flatter device (though I have little real detail on how flat this is). I worry about the switching time, and lifetime problems that dogged earlier electrochromic displays.
Disclaimer: my personal favourite technology is electrostrictive gels, which is why I could trot out these numbers.
Order a book off amazon, then flash the latest errata in, have animated tutorials in them.
The best part of this is the image staying without power...
Greetings cards with full motions pr0n videos!!
Shirt ties that gets hacked in meeting and turn into giant trouser snakes.
Oh the fun.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I know most American gov. beer is shunned around here, but what about Guinness?
Guinness is alright. I prefer Murphies Stout if I was going for an import from Ireland. In the states there are plenty of microbrews to choose from that are a touch more interesting.
I just looked at all thier fuss and bother, and the 'image stays without power'
But then I read the disclaimer, if you shake them the image disspears!
Nothing more than a uppity etch-a-sketch! Works on same principles.
Nanotech my ass!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Finally a comfortable way to read e-books without killing more trees.
You shock me sir, that's actually somehow got this from "All the Irish do is make bombs and drinks" to something vaguely relating to the topic at hand.
Are you sure you're on the right website?
What's up with you people! It's so childish. Two more mature ways: 1) Either you think that porn is not good and then you at least try to avoid it. 2) Or you think that porn is totally ok and then you have balls to admit it publically and not be silly about it.
You must be new here (SCNR).
I haven't seen many iPod displays up close, but that pic looks unimpressive as far as general LCD displays go.
Ironic that most slashdotters are anti-capitalist leftist but when it comes to toys such as these (which wouldn't have been developed with the pace they are without capitalism), they seem to forget their hip and "progressive" ideals.
NTERA put one of its NCD screens inside an iPod.
It looks bright and vibrant from virtually any angle (except from the back).
Thank you mister obvious!
But yeah, you're right, it does have superior contrast by the look of it. I imagine it'll be used for eletronic papers and the like.
I use lynx you insensitive clod.
HAD
As far as I can tell, most "e-paper" has focused on two technologies -- the original 'white side/black side' rotating-sphere design, where the little balls or molecules flip one way or the other based on charge, and Philips' new oily-dye tech for color displays, where oil dyes ebb and flow across pixels for similar reasons.
There's OLED and FED and LCD and all that, but 'e-paper' seems to imply a non-emissive display meant for reflective viewing, with no backlighting, and theoretically reduced power consumption to make it worthwhile.
If I'm following this right, these guys, with their 'NCD' stuff, seem to have found a way to make that sort of display with a higher resolution and faster response time, using more of an LCD-like substrate (so we're talking fragile glass panels with electrodes, but at least we as a species know how to do that). Instead of spinning physical spheres (be they balls or large molecules), or getting macroscopic globs of dye to slide around, they've found a repeatable and reversible electrochemical reaction that'll turn their coating from 'invisible' to 'colored' and back again, as those little molecules change the absorption/reflection of the substance depending where they're bound. Upshot is that it looks good, offers another possibility for color, and miiight be more stable against sunlight bleaching... downside is that you still need one pixel with one cocktail per color.
This seems like a halfway step between existing e-paper and what Iridigm were working on, where you're basically using microprisms to refract the spectrum of light you want... but the Iridigm tech requires a lot of (admittedly elegant) complexity, since each infinitely-variable pixel has to be made up of a ton of microactuators of one form or another. Upshot is that Iridigm would guarantee stability in sunlight (as long as heat doesn't fry the circuitry itself), since there are no chemical dyes or filters to 'wash out' in the classical sense... But does the NCD stuff offer any new breakthroughs in stability?
(Not whoring for Iridigm, they're just the only new display tech I've never heard anyone else talking about.)
OSX
just shake it.
Laws are for people with no friends.
when I see it at BestBuy.
01/20/09
Just like the previous article to this one about robert bigelow, this article came from popular science. at least you said that the first time.
The image remains on the display even after power is removed, and does not require a backlight. That cuts power requirements dramatically, according to the company. Although painting the initial image takes more power than with an LCD, once displayed, the image will remain for days or weeks without needing another charge.
So this doesn't sound like a replacement for most LCDs that make frequent updates to their display like an iPod, right? Although it seems well suited for the eBook and alarm clock, since they're devices that update their display infrequently. The eBook could especially benefit from the high resolution display.
Since it seems that the display doesn't clear itself if you remove the power, it would be interesting for firmware writers to have to flush the display on devices before a power down. The assumption with the current technology is no power = no display.
What's up with the iPod's progress bar? I've never seen one segmented like that--mine both just fill in the bar with black from left to right.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
A happy coincidence that the MPEG encoding format selectively keeps the parts of the screen that change to compress moving images.
An MPEG decoder card designed for this screen embedded in a purpose built portable dvd player could actually be easier to implement than for a raster screen.
I had a rudimentary monitor prototype that did almost exactly what this product is claiming to do. It was a flat, pixellated display, not much more than 8", that operated completely without batteries. The picture was "tuned in" using the two control dials at either side of the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, it never gained widespread acceptance because the refresh rate was so low and pictures displayed tended to be very blocky. Still, the display would last for hours, unless shaken for some reason. I think it was based on magnetic field technology.
I became very good at tuning it in, but far too often my parents would make me put it down and go play outside.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Great idea I hope its successful because I'm at the point where I think all printers should be removed from offices but.......... Can someone explain why this is considered nanotechnology? Did they actually manipulate the crystals in the display, or just cook it differently? I'm starting to get flashbacks to the dot com days where you attach 'Internet' to anything and people threw money at you. I'm starting HyperNanoWiMaxGPL Co. Any investors?
Like in digital picture frames. I've always wanted a technology like this, that I can throw in a mini-itx box and use it for mostly-static data. The alternatives never seem to fit my liking.
It could also eventually be used in the various places I see high resolution plasma displays. Like my bank, which has 5 50" plasmas scrolling interest rates and advertising free checking (which makes me insanely jealous). Not to mention you could actually use them in retail stores for pricing/adverts.
-- I have fans? Wow.
'course, neither tech is going to be showing up at Best Buy anytime soon, so for now it's a moot point. ^_^
Seems that this is the same way a Magna Doodle works... dark substance becomes visible when pulled through an opaque barrier.
Iridigm looks like a compelling tech - especially in meeting the challenge of over-lighting stability. Qualcomm just bought the 85% of them that it didn't already own, for a total value of $200M. I wonder whether we'll see an iridigm phone in the next 12-18 months.
--
make install -not war
It's reflective, with a white (opaque) background. A revolutionary technology, but, like paper, how do we see it in the dark? Where we spend lots of time looking at our mobile devices, especially since phone rates drop after sundown? Existing technology has a backlight, but where does it go in an NCD?
--
make install -not war
I don't want an ebook that weighs more or even equally that of an actual book.
I would rather see an 8 1/2 x 11" sheet of this with a data rod / power supply at one end so I could roll the sheet around it (like a scroll) for storage.
Allow me to display any text and B/W illustrations as well as store multiple files which I can change on the fly. Refresh needs to only be as fast as a casual turn of a page.
View portrait-wise for news, magazines, and web files, view at landscape for two pages per sheet like a book.
Now, it seems to me that they're already there, but Sony decides to go all proprietary (surprise!), and everyone else wants full-color, full-motion wallpaper HDTVs. Where's the happy middle for those of us who still know how to read (apologies to Ohio and Florida) and want something easy to use on the metro in the meanwhile?
It makes me wonder if Steve Guttenberg had as much trouble implementing use of the printing press in making those bibles.
No, E-ink is issuing press releases about it. Note that the "products" page just says "E-ink is working with partners...", and hasn't been updated since 2002.
Kent Displays has had a similar technology since the late 1990s. Their displays require no power when not changing and are sunlight-readable. Update is sluggish, so they are used mostly for signs, clocks, and other less-dynamic applications.
The iPod has an identical screen in both photos? Which ties-in with the screen staying the same for long times, but seems a bit weird. Also, I have never seen my iPod make that weird bar thing in the photo....
Bah. The iPod display is almost certainly fake. While they may have inserted an actual NCD into the case of the thing, it's not interfacing with the iPod's own display controller. If you follow the link to the ExtremeTech article, you'll see two views of the iPod (taken at different times - one has a second iPod set in front)...both show the track supposedly playing (triangle at top left), yet both show the time at 0:00 (very unlikely coincidence). Also, what is that segmented bar? I don't think it corresponds to anything the actual iPod UI would display. Am I wrong here?